


sharing

by Murf1307



Series: XMA Fic Bingo Fics [9]
Category: X-Men: Apocalypse (2016) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, M/M, POV Character of Color, Post-Canon, Reunions, Sharing a Bed, Sharing a Body, Sharing a Brain, There's just a lot of sharing okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:40:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7234144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first night they’re both back from the dead, they need some time alone together. OR: Turns out Armando was hitching a ride all along, and the explosion just blasted him free.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sharing

**Author's Note:**

> written for the fanfic bingo prompt "sharing a bed"

It’s Alex’s idea, holed up in the hotel where everyone is staying — practically bought out every empty room, Charles did, but they need it; there are too many kids who can’t go home, or don’t want to admit what happened to overprotective parents. 

Alex leans on Armando, and Armando leans back.  Twenty years of shared memories, and Armando has no idea what to say. 

“I think you’re the only reason I survived ‘Nam,” Alex murmurs.  “You in my head, I mean.  You kept us alive."

“Didn’t know it,” Armando murmurs back.  “Instinct, I guess."

“Can you stay?” 

Armando hums.  “Hotshot, we’re already sharing a room."

“No, I mean.  Stay _here_."

He pauses, not sure what to say to that.  Alex had always been skittish, before.  

Of course, that was twenty years ago.  A lot happens in twenty years: a war, a riot, too many smoky bars to name, too many first-time-last-time hookups that Armando knows too much about because he lived them too.

Saw them through Alex’s eyes.  

“If you want to, I mean,” Alex clarifies, already shifting away like he’s sure Armando wants to leave him.

It occurs to Armando that he knows everything about Alex, and Alex doesn’t really know much of anything about him.

“I do,” he says.  “I really, really do."

_Here_  is the bed by the window, mattress firmer than Armando knows Alex likes, but with enough pillows to make up the difference.  Armando slides an arm around Alex’s shoulders, tugs him closer.

Twenty years, like being asleep.

In this moment, the years vanish like a dream, and he feels twenty and stupid, feels like a hero.

“I think I’ll stay as long as you want me around,” he murmurs.  “You cool with that?"

Alex nods, and his forehead falls against Armando’s.  Armando lets out a soft sigh.  Touching Alex still feels the same, an electric shock of intimacy, like a sin you’re supposed to spend your life committing.

“I spent twenty years —"

“I know."

They don’t have to talk about it, don’t have to talk about the grief, about the fact that twenty years later, Alex thinks he loves him.

Armando didn’t know it while it was happening, but he knows he spent the last twenty years falling in love with Alex, too.  So they don’t have to talk about it, not really.  Armando knows.

All he has to do is show Alex that.

He lifts a hand and cups Alex’s face with it.  He’s barely aged a day since the compound, and Armando wonders briefly  if his presence, stuck to Alex’s nervous system, hitching a ride, had something to do with that.

“What are you doing?” Alex asks, voice soft and low, a genuine tremor of a sound.

Alex is an earthquake and an atom bomb, and Armando isn’t sure he’ll ever get enough of the natural disasters perched in Alex’s bones.

“Lovin’ you, if you’ll let me."

Alex inhales, sharply.  “Is that something you want?"

“Uh-huh.”  The thought flashes through him, mysterious deaths in the Village in the last few years; Trask and Shaw and Apocalypse; prison and murder and making war for peace; the legacy of death that haunts everything they are.

“Even after…?"

“I think I fell in love with you,” Armando explains, free hand tracing the place on Alex’s side that he’d touched twenty years ago when all this began.

“Oh,” Alex whispers, and surges forward.

Now they’re kissing, and Armando drags Alex closer, pulls him on top of him as he sinks back flat on the bed.

He realizes, with all the firmness of eternity, that he is never sleeping alone again.


End file.
